Defending Their Worldly Possessions

By JENNIFER CONLIN

July 31, 2014

“This was your grandmother’s,” my mother said to me holding up a china teacup and delicate saucer, admiring its flowery Wedgwood pattern. “It’s very special.”

“I’m sure it was,” I said, coaxing it out of her hands and into a cardboard box destined for the attic. I suddenly lamented not buying more large flat pack boxes. This one was filling up fast with a mélange of my 80-year-old mother’s other “special” stuff (candlesticks, vases, platters and linens), all of which she thought her grandchildren may need one day.

“Your baby cup!” my mother said excitedly, handing over a tiny silver mug with my name engraved on it. I feigned excitement before burying it in the box.

As anyone who has ever tried to clean out a parents’ home knows, the process requires not just a firm hand, but extreme patience — the latter not always being my strong suit.

While most people go through this difficult decision making after their parents die or move into a retirement home, my circumstances were different. My husband, Daniel, and I moved into my parents’ home four years ago, ultimately buying it with them still in residence. The only way any of our belongings could come into the house was for some of theirs to leave it, preferably permanently.

Call me heartless, but clutter drives me crazy. It is not that I am totally unsentimental, though my husband and our children accuse me of that each time they rescue a moldy, but still beloved, stuffed animal from the trash. Rather I think of myself as practical. When the table tops are so crowded with picture frames and tchotchkes that you can’t set down a water glass, I say it’s time to clear the decks.

The problem was, even when my parents were willing to part with a few of their larger possessions (like the French settee, Edwardian coffee table or Lincoln rocker), they were not willing to discount or donate them. Instead, they were certain they were worth a small fortune. Given that Daniel and I were paying a small fortune to store our household goods up the road, we decided a few months ago to call in the nearby auction house to arbitrate.

And that’s when the brewing family feud took an unexpected turn, as we soon turned to one another and realized we had discovered a common enemy: the appraiser who was passing a skeptical eye over our “priceless” family heirlooms.

What we quickly learned is how very low a top estate appraiser can make you feel within five minutes. “Do you have any midcentury modern?” she asked mere moments after surveying our living room, filled with my parents’ polished antiques and silver. “Preferably from Denmark,” she added. “That’s what all the young successful entrepreneurs like these days,” she said, looking over at Daniel and me like we were antiques that couldn’t be auctioned, too.

“We only take sterling,” she said turning over a platter looking for an insignia. “This one’s silver plate,” she said dumping it off to one side.

Upon locating a small tear in one seat back, she said, “No one fixes caned chairs anymore.” I watched my mother grimace and my father bristle as she began questioning the provenance of the artwork they were willing to forfeit.

“Never heard of her,” the auction lady said, when my father mentioned the name of one particular artist.

“I remember buying that painting in that wonderful gallery in New York decades ago,” my mother recalled, looking over at my father wistfully.

“I would take those,” the Chanel-suited woman said walking over to my mother’s Queen Anne dining room chairs we sit in every night over dinner. “And that,” she said glancing at my grandmother’s sterling tea set we still use on special occasions.

“Neither of those is for sale,” I said, my voice beginning to take on a hard edge.

Suddenly, I loved my parents’ old relics. So maybe they were worn out, but they were still wonderful — nothing some new fabric and repair work couldn’t fix.

We ushered her out the door politely, ultimately grateful that she left with at least one box.

But now, I can’t stop thinking about those gold wall sconces she took away. I wonder if I can get them back?

After two decades of living abroad, Jennifer Conlin is now back at her family home in the Midwest, where she lives in a house with her husband and children, her elderly parents and her older brother. Reverse Parenting appears weekly on nytimes.com/fashion.